The ever increasing popularity of cellular communication has led to dramatic improvements in cellular infrastructure deployment in urban areas as well as on highways in rural environments in many countries over the globe. The introduction of the cellular 3G standard and the newer 4G standard has further encouraged significant investments for improving cellular coverage in such areas.
Cellular communication offers a versatile type of communication that is characterized by at least:    (a) communication at a variable distance sub-range that falls in the range of sub-meter (e.g. femto-cells) to more than 10 Km (e.g. macro-cells);    (b) communication of desired application including at least one of audio, video and data;    (c) communication in a variety of environments including at least one of urban, sub-urban and rural areas,all using basically the same cellular mobile stations (e.g. cellular telephones, smart-phones or tablets).
However, the vast majority of the cellular infrastructures is of a stationary nature, namely utilization of stationary core segments and base stations. Whilst the efficient deployment of stationary infrastructure affords efficient cellular communication in many densely populated areas, it falls short in providing the same quality of service (or even any cellular coverage) in areas that lack adequate cellular infrastructure or are devoid of any infrastructure.
In addition, even geographical areas that have appropriate cellular coverage may be susceptible to degraded performance or even total collapse of cellular communication coverage, for instance resulting from natural disasters, for example such as when a hurricane storm significantly damages the stationary stations or cores.
This may not only adversely affect the ability of the population in the disaster area to contact each other, but also may hinder rescue efforts held by rescue forces such as the police, firemen and medical emergency forces who may require efficient cellular communication extremely useful for fulfilling their designated rescue tasks.
As an alternative to lack of cellular communication infra-structure, and considering for example a rescue task (e.g. extinguishing a fire spread over a large area), the rescue team may be required to employ various types of wireless communication devices, some of which are designated for short range communication (e.g. between firemen that are close to each other), others adapted for long range communication (e.g. between a fireman communicating with a pilot for directing an airplane carrying fire extinguishing substances towards a desired area). Certain devices are operable in rural environments but their functionality is adversely affected in urban environments. Some devices are adapted for voice application but cannot communicate video or data.
There is thus a need to provide a cellular system that employs non-stationary base station(s) utilizable in a geographical area that lacks adequate coverage for facilitating versatile communication.
Conventional technology pertaining to certain embodiments of the present invention is described in the following publications inter alia:
Spatial Array Processing, Murat Torlak, The University of Texas at Austin, available on the World Wide Web
An Overview of Adaptive Antenna Systems, Hafeth Hourani, Helsinki University of Technology, available on the World Wide Web
An Overview of Adaptive Antenna Technologies For Wireless Communications, Chris Loadman, Dr. Zhizhang Chen & Dylan Jorgensen, Dalhousie University, available on the World Wide Web
Optimal MIMO Transmission Schemes with Adaptive Antenna Combining in the RF Path, Santamaria et al., European signal processing conference 2008, available on the World Wide Web
Smart Antenna Design for Wireless Communication using Adaptive Beamforming Approach, Susmita Das, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, India, available on the World Wide Web
An Examination of the Processing Complexity of an Adaptive Antenna System for WiMAX, Li et al., DSPEnabledRadio Conference, 2005, available on the World Wide Web
U.S. Pat. No. 5,363,111 to Murphy, entitled “Apparatus and method for spatial nulling of interfering signals”
Adaptive Antenna Systems, Widrow et al., IEEE proceedings, 1967, available on the World Wide Web
3GPP TS 36.300—Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA) and Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access Network (E-UTRAN); Overall description; Stage 2, available on the World Wide Web
3GPP TS 36.302—Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA); Services provided by the physical layer, available on the World Wide Web
Imposing pattern nulls on broadband array responses, Peter Kootsookos et al., Journal Acoustical Society of America, 105 (6), June 1999                Digital Beamforming in Wireless Communications, John Litva and Titus Kwok-Yeung Lo, Artech House, 1996        Smart Antennas, Lal Chand Godara, CRC Press, 2004        Smart Antennas for Wireless Communications, Frank Gross, McGraw-Hill, 2005        WiMAX Technologies, Performance analysis, and QoS, Syed Ahson and Mohammad Ilyas, CRC Press, 2008        “Null-steering LMS Dual-Polarised Adaptive Antenna Arrays for GPS”, W. C. Cheuk, M. Trinkle & D. A. Gray, Journal of Global Positioning Systems (2005), Vol. 4, No. 1-2: 258-267The disclosures of all publications and patent documents mentioned in the specification, and of the publications and patent documents cited therein directly or indirectly, are hereby incorporated by reference.        